Update on the Damn Sotomayor Hearings

July 16, 2009

Today Arlen Specter asks if she’d like TV cameras in the Supreme Court.
Sotomayor tells John Cornyn she won’t use foreign law to interpret the constitution. Tom Coburn asks her if she’s worried that gun control would take the right to bear arms away from slaves if we still had slaves. Also tells her, and the world, that America’s abortion laws are more liberal than those of the rest of the world, of which he seems to disapprove. He wants her to say whether the courts have “ended” the debate over abortion. “No,” says Sotomayor. (She might as easily said, “Obviously,” but this is neither the time nor place. Then he asks her what she’d do about it if she were king. Sotomayor deflects. Coburn remains “deeply troubled.”)

On the topic of the Second Amendment, Patrick Leahy talks about all the guns he owns. He invites Sotomayor to go target-shooting with him back in Vermont. Jeff Sessions goes on about the confiscation of guns; Leahy points out that Sessions’ home state of Alabama has more restrictive gun laws than his.

Franken asks Sotomayor why she wants to be a Supreme Court Justice. How we were hoping she’d say, “Fuck it, I don’t anymore.” But instead she offers to “tell a story.” On another judicial appointment, it seems, her mom asked if she would make more money. Sotomayor said she would make much less. Mom asked if she would get to travel. Sotomayor said she would not. “Why do you want this job?” she asked. Stepfather Omar Lopez then said in Spanish, “You know your daughter and her stuff with public service.” And that appears to be the point: she has stuff with public service, which she reasserts as “passion” for those listeners not fluent in transliterated Spanish.

The Republicans have asked for a lightning round of 10-minute questions which the chair has granted. Jeff Sessions asks if she can live on the salary. She says she’ll “suffer” with it. (Associate Justices get $208,100.)

“Such a sad day for the country if she gets affirmed, just welcome all the illegals here at that point,” says dcwbysfn22 “You think I could submit a FOIA request to see the doodles Sotomayor is writing each time she is called something racist?” says dchiflock